Sermon: St. Barnabas – 2023

11 June 2023

Text: Mark 6:7-13 (Isa 42:5-12, Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

St. Barnabas was a huge figure in the early church.  He wasn’t part of the original twelve, but Scripture calls him an “apostle” – that is, one sent out by God to preach.  Barnabas was a Jew, and he was of the tribe of Levi, the tribe from which came the priests and their assistants.  When he became a Christian, he came to realize that the true temple, the true priest, and the true sacrifice was Jesus.  And Barnabas shifted his priestly service from the rituals of the Old Testament to serving our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought us the New Testament, the fulfillment and completion of the Old.

Barnabas brought St. Paul to the city of Antioch, the place where the word “Christian” was first used.  And Barnabas accompanied Paul in his first missionary journey.  St. Luke, in our epistle reading from Acts, describes Barnabas as a “good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”  And because of Barnabas’s preaching, Luke says, “A great many people were added to the Lord.” 

Tradition in the church maintains that St. Barnabas – like nearly all of the early preachers, missionaries, pastors, and bishops of the church – was martyred for the faith that he held, and for the sake of the Christ whom he served. 

And although Scripture doesn’t have much more to say about St. Barnabas, what we do know is that he was a proclaimer of the saving Word of God.  And everywhere he went, people heard the Word, believed, and likewise followed Jesus.  And as is the case with all of our saints and heroes in the church, Barnabas’s greatness is not in and of himself, and we don’t remember him for his own deeds, but we call to mind his life that was dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that Jesus worked mightily through Barnabas, whom He called to this holy work of preaching the Gospel.

Just before our Lord ascended, He told the apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  And in carrying out this task, the Lord added to the ranks of his called and ordained and sent preachers, like Barnabas, in a similar way to how He sent off the twelve, “two by two,” giving them “authority over the unclean spirits.” 

For it was by the preaching of the twelve that Jerusalem was won to the kingdom, and it would be by their preaching, and by the preaching of others who were added to their number, that Judea and Samaria would be led out of darkness to light, and it will be by even more preachers, called over the course of thousands of years, who will be our Lord’s witnesses to the “end of the earth.”  For that work goes on even today, dear friends, and will continue until the world’s end and the return of Jesus.

And though it is easy to romanticize those early days of the church, and to carve statues of marble to represent men like Sts. Paul and Barnabas – and it is important that we honor the saints and call them to our memory, to emulate them and express our love for them, to give thanks to God for them – but it is also important to keep in mind that their work goes on today in what seems so ordinary.  We carry with us the same Gospel of the same Jesus, preaching to the same world enrobed in darkness and held captive by the devil, a world that desperately needs the hope and light that only Jesus can provide.  For it is only the Gospel that “casts out many demons” and brings healing to those suffering the sickness of sin and death.

Barnabas preached Christ and Him crucified.  He tirelessly traveled from place to place in search of those who needed to hear the Good News.  Some would hear the Word and come to faith, but others would not.  And the same is true today, dear friends.  Some will hear the preaching of the Word for years on end, and still not believe, while others may disbelieve for years on end, and then one day, the Word successfully implants, takes root, and grows – bearing fruit, even a hundredfold. 

And so on this feast in which we celebrate St. Barnabas, we are really celebrating Jesus, the Seed of the Word, which has been implanted into us by preaching, watered by baptism, and tended and nurtured by the Holy Spirit, and fed by the Sacrament of the Altar, that is, by Jesus’ presence.  We continue to hear and confess this Gospel – the same one preached by Paul and Barnabas, the same one embodied in the living Christ who is present with us, and who was present in the preaching of St. Barnabas, in the Word proclaimed by the apostles.

“So they went,” says St. Mark, “and proclaimed that people should repent, and they cast out demons.”  We preach the same thing today, dear friends.  For the Word of God includes the Law.  The Law shows us our sins.  And the Law calls us to repent.  The Law shows that we cannot do this ourselves.  The preaching of the Law makes us hungry and thirsty for an answer to this dilemma, some Good News.  And this proclamation – the proclamation of Barnabas and all Christian preachers – includes the Good News, the Gospel, that though the Law condemns you, Christ forgives you, though you cannot repent of your own will, it is the will of God to rescue you.

We celebrate St. Barnabas because we celebrate the one Barnabas preached, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified for us, rose for us, and sent the Holy Spirit to us, who continues to use preachers and His Word to save us from sin, death, and the devil. 

We preach even as Isaiah did in the Old Testament, repeating the Word of God: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you….  The former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare…. Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise to the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.”

And we do sing a new song, dear friends, a song not to glorify ourselves or of worldly heroes, but rather of the humble and yet mighty Word:

On what has now been sown
Thy blessing, Lord, bestow;
The power is Thine alone
To make it sprout and grow.
Do Thou in grace the harvest raise
And Thou alone shalt have the praise.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.